Steve Talbott
Mailing Address:
1313 S Deakin Street
Moscow, ID 83843
Phone: 208 882-2130
sctalbott@gmail.com
Kids:
| Hillary | Our first daugter Hillary, now twenty eight, was married last July to Mark Williams. Hillary received an AA degree from Sterling College in Vermont, a B.S.and an M.S. in Soil Science from the University of Idaho. Her senior year at the U of I she was one of the top ten nationally in collegiate soil judging. She and her husband Mark are now living in Southwestern New Mexico where Hillary is working for the U.S. Forest Service as a soil scientist doing terrestrial ecosystem surveying on the Gila National Forest. |
| Mariah | Our youngest daughter Mariah, now twenty-four, wandered off to Northern California when she was offered a small scholarship to play soccer (keeper) for the Lumberjacks of Humboldt State University. It was fun for us to travel around the Northwest to watch her and the rest of the 'Jacks play. Mariah graduated from HSU in 2004 with a B.S. degree and she was given the Michael Scott Award for the outstanding senior in Fisheries. After an extended trip to New Zealand, Australia, and Fiji she is now in southwestern Montana working as a landscape tech. and looking for the right fishries job. |
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| Left to Right - Mariah, Chris, Steve, Hillary, Mark and my
mother Jeanette Talbott July 3rd, 2004 - Hillary's and Mark's Wedding |
Who says it's been forty years? Sometimes it feels like it has been fifty-five years and at other times it seems like it was about three years ago. That is why I take the average and tell everyone that I'm going to my twenty-ninth high school reunion. Makes me feel a little younger, until I look in the mirror.
The fall of '65 following graduation I enrolled at the U of I thinking that in the spring of '69 I would graduate with a B. S.- Ed and become a high school science teacher. It took me an extra year to achieve the first part of the goal. I spent three summers working as a smoke chaser for the U.S. Forest Service between academic years. After a successful student teaching stint at Buhl High School and graduation from the same stage that we all traipsed across five years earlier, I was ready to face the world.
My immediate military obligation and subsequent basic training somehow got in the way of searching for a teaching position. I spent six years in the Idaho Army National Guard with the Orofino unit.
In the spring of l972 I was offered a job by the Forest Service as a forestry technician on the Slate Creek Ranger District, between White Bird and Riggins. During the summer of 1973 I met a young woman from Ohio who was on the first women’s fire crew on the ranger district. After chasing each other through the woods for two summers and across the U of I campus during the intervening winter we were married in December 1974. I continued to work as a tech and Chris worked part time in the district office. We added to our family in May l977 when Hillary was born in Grangeville.
The spring of 1978 found us making a move to the Dayton, Ohio area to build a house for Chris' parents. My father, at that time a recently retired wood technologist, had made a casual offer to build a house for Chris' parents. When they took him up on that offer he convinced me to resign my FS position and help with house building in Ohio. It was a great year working with my parents and my wife's parents on a project like that.
After the Ohio house was complete, Idaho was calling me so we headed back to Moscow in May 1979. For the next few years I helped build several houses in the Latah and Nezperce county area. The most satisfying house to build was our own. I continued to work as a carpenter through the early to mid '80s. Our second child, Mariah was born in January 1981 while we were in the middle of our house building.
I began an association with Harry DeWitt in l987 building cabinets. This later led to a partnership that lasted until 1992 when my cousin Ivan Talbott and I bought the business and formed a partnership. We have been building custom cabinets for homes, offices and medical facilities in the Moscow area since then.
Chris supports my hobby that I call my business by working at Washington State University. She has been employed by several departments on campus in work and is currently a Administrative Assistant in the College of Business Department of Marketing.
Chris graduated Summa Cum Laude from the U of I receiving a B.S. Elementary Ed. in 1993. When she found the elementary education job market saturated in the Latah and Whitman county area and we decided we wouldn't move out of Moscow she returned to work at WSU.
Because our daughters went to school or worked in such interesting places Chris and I have enjoyed traveling to visit them. This coming September we will make our first European trip together to Spain and Portugal. We are both involved in our church's activities by serving on various committees and singing in the choir. Chris plays piano for some church services and she accompanies soloists and small ensembles as well. She allowed me to fill one of my suppressed desires this summer. When she purchased a baritone horn and played in the Moscow Arts Commission Community band I, at middle age, became a band groupie!
We both enjoy gardening and put in a vegetable garden each year. One of the fall highlights in our family is the yearly cidering day. We get together with friends and family and after combining our apples we typically squeeze out fifty to eighty gallons of cider.
We try to jam in a little recreation into our schedule with tent camping, short backpacking trips, white water rafting, hiking, cross country skiing and a little biking. I really enjoy what little stream fishing I get to do, and only wish I could beat the water to a froth more often.
Because of my early family ties to the area and my parents' examples I have long been interested in local history. I have either served on the board of trustees or some committee of the Latah County Historical Society for nearly twenty-five years.
Chris and I really enjoy the Moscow area and we find our home just south of the U of I campus can be very convenient when walking to the many cultural and athletic events offered by the U of I . I look around at the rapid growth of Moscow and the surrounding area and sometimes yearn for days when the town was a bit smaller and the pace was a little slower. Could this be old age creeping up and how far around the corner is senility?
Naw, I'm still looking for that mid-life crisis!
I would so enjoy seeing all of you at the reunion, and remember there doesn't need to be an official designated time for a reunion at my house ..just walk up and bang on the door!
Steve